starbrow

From beginning to almost end, this is saltwater-logged woods, very aquatic, very salty, very cologney. It gives me a headache every time I go to sniff it. I get zero plum, the faintest whiff of opium smoke. It is so very salted aquatics, and the effect is incredibly intense for the first hour or two. Gradually, the sweetness of the opium smoke begins to creep in. Still getting very little plum, although it's starting to smell faintly like the drowned-at-sea cousin of Evil on another spot down my arm. I just don't think Asleep in the Deep is for me. I adore plum, and I get basically none here. What I do get is headache-inducing, so I think it's got to go.

Being evil is so FUN! This is plum tobacco, smoked with opium, then set the room on fire and watch it burn. It is so fiery but also surprisingly sweet. I can also pick out the coolness of green tea and the grassiness of vetiver, rounding out the more flamboyant notes. There's something a little peppery or gingery sprinkled in too. I wonder if the "smolder" is ginger or another spicy root! It really lifts Evil up and out of purely dark territory and places it somewhere glowing. I can also, strangely, detect a whiff of A Savage Veil's patch/plum/tobacco combo but in a completely different outfit. Really amazing. Plum is just one of the many players, yet it's used in such an unusual setting that I feel like it stands out amongst other plum blends as something both playful and powerful. Like dressing up as a Disney villain and everybody is amused but also a little scared because you really pull it off. If you want something really off the beaten path with a medium whiff of plum, Evil's your ticket. I have a bottle and love it!

Oh this is so pretty! The indigo musk permeates each phase of wearing The Night-Raven with its dark yet friendly aura - a drop of elderberry, blackberry, and/or plum in this musk, I think? And that's in addition to the extra plum that's been added to this blend, but it's still not a plum-heavy kind of scent, just a little shimmer in the dark twilight of these woods. I really do get kind of a dusky forest feeling from wearing The Night-Raven, the smooth quiet resins of benzoin and patchouli whispering softly together. We can't forget the florals, either. Two usually loud flowers have been blended in flawlessly. Rose geranium has a touch of subtle spice (not rose, though!), and the night-blooming jasmine is so soft as to almost be unnoticeable. They are surprisingly subtle additions to this velvety dusk, and for once I would not take away the florals from a blend if I could. I think I might upgrade The Night-Raven to a bottle at some point! What a win!

Oh hi, red sandalwood from Anne Bonny! A smooth, ruddy kind of incensey sandalwood blooms along with a smear of deep red rose perfume, but this is not a rose bomb as it could have been. I barely know there is oud or bergamot at this party. They are such quiet notes, and that can't always be said about oud. Nor, indeed, about rose! This rose is mature and perfumey to my nose, which is probably the oud at work, taking that loud rosiness and drawing it down into darker, more aromatic depths. (No need to fear pooud here, either.) Let's talk about the plum, shall we? It's a drop. It's a very very soft hint of the purple fruit that we all know and that I love. As the rose burns off more and more, the plum emerges as a middle note woven into the deep base of sandalwood and oud. I am getting a little bit of the fuzziness too that bergamot can bring, without any specifically citrus notes. The plum here is a mere accessory; this is not a very plummy blend, alas, but it helps transforms the rose into something more elevated, I think. I like this one a lot but don't love it enough to bottle. The Elephant is Slow to Mate or Nimue the Blood Queen are both more plummy kinds of perfumes that I gravitate towards, and Snooty Rose is just a little pallid compared with the love I have for those.

A light, watery floral is the vibe that Kitsune-Tuski gives me; a floral I don't mind being wrapped in. Compared with my single note Vanilla Orchid, Kitsune emerges very orchid-dominant, which is probably the reason I love it! Orchid is a soft, floaty floral to me with a hint of cream and a dreamy purple mood. I am not sure what daffodil smells like, but I know jasmine very well (💀 ) and the jasmine is thankfully playing it very cool in this blend. A sheer white musk grounds the watercolor florals without taking it to dryer-sheet-town. What of the plum, you say? The Asian plum is different than the Lab's usual plum note. It is light, innocent, and not very gothy or juicy. Picture the plum note in Kitsune as a droplet of purple added to the whites, yellows, and pinks of the floral landscape, and you will get the overall effect. It is very translucent, and I would not call this a plum-forward blend whatsoever. But it's sweet and appealing, blended amongst the flowers. For this non-florals wearer, this is actually enjoyable to wear and also so fun to LAYER! I paired it with Dorian and was in dreamland. As an orchid-heavy, lightly plummed scent, I can highly recommend Kitsune-Tsuki.

My bottle is aged but of unknown year! A very odd girl, I was sure this had myrrh when I put it on because it was all powdery resin, but on the drydown as the band-aidy, buggy kind of bitterness emerged, I knew it was the Siamese benzoin to blame. I don't think the fruits have aged well, either. The red fruits here smell musty, past their prime, definitely the kind of fruit you pluck with two fingers from the fridge and immediately sweep into the bin. What I'm left with is the suggestion of dark fruits (plum!) on the inhale and a sour stinkbug kind of whiff on the exhale. I'm...puzzled. It doesn't smell terrible from afar, but up close I'm not enjoying it. I'm going to have to try this one again and see, but so far aged Dionysia is not a winner in the plum game. I would like to try a new one and see the difference!

This is really unfortunate. The Arabian musk has jasmine in it. Not a very pleasant jasmine either; I'm pretty sure it's sambac. Once it hits my skin, the jasmine starts amping hard and manages to stomp out even the creamy spiciness of the carnation, completely obliterating any plum to my nose. Plum is my alltime favorite note, so I would have loved to find that dark purple fruity note in a GC, surrounded by some sexy carnation and a bedroom kind of musk. But no, this is a sadly soapy, grating jasmine with pathetic little peeps of plum late in the game but that have no true chance to standing up to that obstreperous floral. I would like very much to extract the jasmine out of Bathsheba and leave her just with the listed notes. As it is, I will keep my imp to remind myself that she's a deceptive temptress (unlike her namesake ) and not to buy a bottle of this!

This was perhaps my earliest plum love, and I still wear it every time I get gothed up. The gorgeous purpled plum note is dragged into dark, sexy places by the most opulent patchouli you can imagine, a black velvet of a patchouli, and chunky booted-tobacco leaf, sweet but not caramelized, a little dreamy like tobacco flower. The least noticeable note is the nutmeg, but when I went to my spice cabinet to sniff it by itself, the nutmeg reads as a warm forest walk kind of barky note, and I do get a whiff of that kind of freshly peeled bark kind of wood from A Savage Veil. Really, though, this is a darkly romantic backdrop against which the purple-eyed plum can dance. This is my go-to recommendation to others (and myself) who want a rich, gothy plum that is easily accessible from the lab. I love the smoothness of the aged patchouli that lets plum do her thing and gives her the depth and sophistication to shine and last. Medium throw on me, but it lasts a long time! In a not-so-clinical test against A Shadow in the Elevator in my household, A Savage Veil won, btw Do I have three bottles of this? Yes I do!

Now it's my turn to be chasing @Lucchesa around the review board, as I was re-testing some tonka blends tonight and realized I had never reviewed Ashlultum - indeed, I had to rescue it from my potential sales/swap pile. I'm glad I did. Even though coconut and I are not speaking to each other right now, and lilac can be a real bully, I strangely love the odd little pairing they making in Ashlultum. They're set against a background of the beautiful fuzzy tonka that I am living for at the moment, and that is the third note that speaks most clearly to me in this blend. It's so interesting to me that it's distinct from the vanilla tea - which I really don't get much of the tea here, other than some softly supporting warmth and spice in the musk and tea - but that the uniquely non-foodie sweet snuggliness of tonka speaks so uniquely here. I love it! I enjoy how Ashlultum is not a suntan-lotion-bomb of a coconut scent. The other notes anchor it, particularly the nicely contrasting bitterness of tobacco and hyssop, though they don't stand out so much as just stand steadfast against the avalanche that could have been coconut/lilac. Somehow, I can't stop huffing my wrist. The tonka really, really saves the coconut! Dang, I am shook. I'm keeping my bottle and going to enjoy it a lot in the summer - and enjoy layering it with darker/bitier scents that could use a touch of sweetness and warmth.

Sparkly pink poo. The fanciest poo you will ever meet. This really does have the sparkly amber from Awake and Abalone Vulva, plus the red oud you all know and love from the duets and trios. I don't get a lot of rose, but there is something very faintly rosy over all the resins, though none of them are particularly standing out to me - no sweet vetiver rising to the surface, alas. Just pinky blushy notes over some considerable stank. What an odd little sip. It's a rosé all day. It's very, very pretty. I just cannot shake the indolic fancy pooudh off of the blend for at least an hour or two on my skin, and I think I would like Butterfly Dancer much more without it. Hanging onto my couple of MLs without upgrading, for now.

All three of these notes are ones that typically work on my skin, yet this was such a massive fail for me. I can't escape the impression of rotting flowers and rotting fruit. This fig is past ripe; she's molding, and there are some dead flowers sitting next to her that need to be tossed. I am reminded of gardenia in that way. Maybe the bees that made this honey were sucking on gardenia! (Figuratively speaking for this vegan honey). As it dries down, it becomes a tooth-achingly ripe fig, that may or may not be edible, but I wouldn't risk it. I really, really hate Honey, Black Fig, & Olibanum personally, but I could totally see someone else finding it beautiful depending on taste. The indolics of it probably are getting to me. I wasn't expecting it to be this floral, and I REALLY wasn't expecting it to be this indolic. Alas, not for me!

I am unsure of how I feel about this Honey. The wet stage is full of sharp honey and a champaca incense, which gives it a powdery floral edge that I don't enjoy. As the honey and champaca calms down, the darkness of the mahogany wood and the smokiness of the incense begins to emerge. I like this stage a lot. It is pretty, sophisticated, but with sharp edges still. I think I would like this better with an incense that wasn't champaca? Ultimately, this is a rare one where I will keep my low partial but not upgrade to a full bottle. I am curious to see if age softens this one or perhaps my tastes will expand to welcome it into my palate. There are others that have the things I love about Honey, Mahogany, & Incense Smoke, without the things I don't. A waggle of the thumb in the middle, neither up nor down.

I have heard from two people now about this amber that is like Alleviate the Frenzy's, and they are absolutely right! The same salty, bitey amber that made the peach in Alleviate amp and amp into a sharp peachy nimbus is in 2021's The Sun Rising. This time, it surrounds citrus notes in all their glory. I do get some beautiful fuzzy bergamot, with not much orange blossom allowed to peek through the louder note of mandarin. Saffron will be late to the party - as in years late - so I'm not going to wait up for her. Ultimately, however, the citrus is not well-served by this particular amber, with an unfortunate cleaner association solidifying. That's really unfortunate! I would love to see this exact blend with the warmer, cozier amber that's in many of the other Lupercalias this year.

Frankly, this is the biggest, juiciest peach that ever peached. If you adore realistic peach blends, you neeeeeed this one. There's a little creaminess from the rice milk, and the frank and amber are in the background helping the peach hang around for a while. I don't even smell any cardamom. I have never smelled anything that was so reminiscent of the actual experience of biting into a ripe, dribbly, meaty peach. If that sounds good to you...if WEARING that all day sounds good to you...you need Peach Vulva.

Love at first sniff. This was one of those bottles I opened up, inhaled, and immediately swooned over. I am immediately transported to places of smooth olive oil tranquility, like Hanerot Halalu and Olisbos, with the sex appeal of a Defutata or a Morocco. I even get some of the saint-and-sinner dichotomy of Cat Event Exorcist. But in spite of any comparisons, Like the Very Gods is very much its own creation with its own unique attractions. Smooth, creamy layers underpin the soft dribbles of honey over delicately blended olive blossom, without any of it going into a gourmand place. The olive blossom leans away from floral and more toward the silkiness of an exquisitely light and fragrant olive oil. When combined with a sweet skin musk and whipped-cream orris butter, it gives the impression of oils scraped over warm skin as a holy incense burns in the air and fragrant breezes waft from the nearby vineyards and shores. Am I picturing Greek baths? You bet I am. What amazes me is how gossamer each of these potentials suckerpunch notes is, yet the amalgamation has plenty of presence on my skin. I am equally content huffing my wrist and just letting the blend drift around me. 'Clean' is usually a loaded word when it comes to scents, yet I was worried this would have feral, sweaty, haven't-bathed-for-days B.O. funk to it, and instead, I am in a Greek bathhouse, surrounded by good clean skin and the most primal of skin-care components. Both atmospheric and something I WANT to smell like. Unf. I couldn't be more pleased about a blind bottle headed my way. Need need need this in my life.

My nose is really confused by this one. The apple smells almost like pink pepper to me, kind of crisp and high in the nose, and obscured by the florals. Speaking of obscured...I can tell the jasmine tea is beneath - and that's a smell I really love in real life - but boy is it covered up by some bossy lilac and ylang ylang. Rose is in the party too, but it's not the loudest of the three. There's a little creaminess from the woods, but dang this is just kind of a confusing floral apple tea that isn't really gelling for me. I much prefer Glistening Waterfall for an apple matcha tea that is very joyful and exuberant!

Given the notes, I really was expecting Adventuresome Encounters to be way more foodie than it actually is. Instead of a sweet punch of yammy gourmand, this is far more about a warm, heart-kindling amber wrapped in the soft fuzziness of tonka bean. In that respect, it reminds me very much of the Tonka Bean, Black Tea, & Vetiver trio, except with a light dusting of cinnamon instead of the black tea, and amber as the warming element instead of the vetiver. Somewhere nestled into all of this is a touch of something that makes me think PUMPKIN. (It's the yam, duh.) But it's not pumpkin spice at all, and it doesn't scream fall. It's still very Shunga-y, somehow. It's elegant, tea-like, refined. Whatever oakmoss there is very delicate. It's not ruining the party for me. It's not cologney. Thank goodness! I could picture myself wearing this really almost any time of year, it's so comforting and effortlessly chill. It does really good things with my skin, far more than I was expecting. If you've had good luck recently with the ambers and tonkas of the trios, Adventuresome Encounters feels like an extension of those. Do not fear any sugary mess here - there is nothing to go caramel or sweetly rancid on the skin - it is so much tamer than Sweet Potato Musk in that regard. I am so pleased with this blend and will be picking up a bottle.

My bottle says Vivid Enjoyment of the Memory of Rapture. The BPAL website and this very thread says Rupture. Rupture is definitely the most fun. You choose. Okay, but this is such big Thai Sweet Tea mood that I honestly thought I had already reviewed it. It's just Thai Sweet Tea in a perfume bottle. All the flavors and smells of that delicious beverage, blended into one perfume and offered for your application pleasure. Ginger, cardamom, and rice milk are so accounted for, along with sugar, anise, clove, and some unlisted spices that are probably rendering this extra delicious. So ti leaf does not equal tea, but this is definitely Thai tea, let's not kid ourselves. There is no curdly cream or milk note, so don't be fearful of that, but it's such a great sweet Thai tea swirled with ice cubes and something a little creamy (oakmoss?) that I just want to drink it all down through my skin. I felt the need to alert the general universe of this moment. If you have ever been to a Thai restaurant and imbibed this beverage, you know of what I speak. You know what you are getting here. It's magical. You need it.

I try not to stare at notes once a dearly beloved has reached me to be smelled for the first time. So here goes: The rubbery resins are nuzzling me like long-lost stuffed animals made of RUBBER. Sweet and a little plasticky and so, so rubbery. I can't get over it. I kind of love it. I love the smell of rubber. I am blown away because I know that there are no rubber resins (opoponax etc.) listed in the notes, but I refuse to look. Okay let's press on. Orchid is a gentle floral presence. She is the gothiest of flowers. She and I get along. I am happy to have her along for this rubber ride. I know plum is here. But...I can't smell her. At all. Feel free to join the party at any time. What else might be accounted for in the notes...I must look. Peeking. Opium. Okay that is the heady medicinal note. Not quite wormwood, but something really woozy when you take a good sniff. And the rest? Cypress, rose, frankincense (olibanum), and tobacco. Idk. I am a fan of everything but rose, which is stompy, and I don't even get rose. It's all very...Victorian hospital gothic chic, where the patient has escaped in her lace nightgown and fled into the night to drown herself in a rubbery grave. I am kind of all about this. But I need more plum. Will layer with plum things for the plum life. Unf.

This is kind of blend I adore. It makes me want to file Wet Fingers in the winter category so I can wear it from winter into spring, alongside Snow of the Gravestones at Petersfriedhof. The snow mint is indeed snowy, frozen drops of lemon mingling with the freshness of the mint for an herb that is very far away from peppermint or spearmint or anything toothpastey-mint. Thyme mingles in with a delicately herbal, incandescently bitter touch. They scatter over a backdrop of incense, which is of course pale sandalwood and upright champaca. Somehow, Wet Fingers is both warm and cool. She is both holy - that incense is really galloping away with champaca, the holier-than-thou of incense blends - and sensual, with something about the herbs suggesting the indolence of orange blossom. I am in awe every time I apply some, and deeply grateful I managed to acquire a bottle after this baby was discontinued. Once you have found her, never let her go...

There is a Saint and Sinner side of orange blossom + Snake Oil. On the saint side falls Khrysee, which is so vanillic and resinous, I could cry. She glows with holy purity, yet vibrates with Hildegarde-esque levels of ecstasy that are surely forboden somewhere in canon. She does amazing things on my skin, a golden beauty, with orange blossom that goes a little beachy on me, as in beach-warmed skin tanning in the sun. Not quite coconut, mind you, just that hint of Florida life. The sinner side is Vixen, which is all the dirty patchouli gingery vanilla-y side of Snake Oil kissed by orange blossom. In case one was wondering, Khrysee definitely leans in hard to the vanilla and the sweet glow of the amber kissed by orange blossom. She's a Snake Oil kind of vanilla neroli, and I love her. Vixen is a whole nother beast, all siren and sexy and corrupted, and I love her too. They were worth comparing, though. I love Khrysee's oil the most, for sure, and will treasure my bottle!

You know the honeyed patchouli note that the Lab does? This is like. Honeyed woods oudh resins patch, squared and then again. It is off the charts. The honeyed effect of everything is too rich, like too many bites of gooey chocolate cake all at once. I am overwhelmed. 'Sweet' doesn't even do this justice. It is saccharinely, INTENSELY woody. Sap is flowing and oozing over everything. I don't think I was prepared from the description to deal with this much honeyed wood. It is so sweet, it starts going funky. That's probably the oudh. No pooudh, amazing, it's just...a Lot of honey. So much. Torrent is right. I'm not going to even try to isolate each individual note. I would just like to underscore how this is every sweet woods or honeyed resin you have ever smelled, amplified to a hundred. Ice cream by the bowlful at night is good. Ice cream for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and every hour in between is overwhelming. I just can't underscore enough how MUCH Inferior Vena Cava is. It's not inferior to anyone. It's Superior Honey Cave. All day long.

One of my earliest bottle purchases! This one is humid as heck, but the crystal-blue musk is sheer and shimmery, so that you can see the reflections of three heady flowers through its clear depths, with orange blossom and jasmine as the strongest presences and water lily a distant third (thankfully, since lily and I don't get along). This transports me to another time and place, away from the orange blossoms of Florida and to those of Japan, with salt-soaked hinoki wood enhancing the watery effect of the blue musk without hitting me in the head with aquatic woods. Visiting the Sumida River is a bottle I will hold onto for my orange blossom love until my feelings fully settle. (They haven't settled after three years, amazingly!) For being sheer, it is also kind of a LOT. Just on the side of being a little too much. However, the jasmine and aquatics are not punching me in the nose, and the orange blossom and blue musk are also gorgeous and glittering. This little Shunga can stay for now!

This is the dreamiest blend. Full of notes that could go very wrong, I Die of Love goes to all the right places. I am enveloped in a hug of bay laurel and skin-warmed leather, spiced and smoky and woozy, and dare I say, sexy. Could you die from this love? Gladly. The leather stays gentle and contained by the rest of its companion notes, enough that I don't even think about the leather when I'm wearing it. Nor is the smoke the dreaded char; it induces dreams rather than headaches. Gorgeous. I can detect a squish of pepper-spicy berry in the cubeb, and the slight prickle of balsam, almost humorous as it mocks the deeply sensual notes with a touch of scratchy whimsy. The lilac is the softest dusting of that boisterous summer flower that you can imagine. Many times lilac takes a blend by storm and stomps out all the other notes, but here it is a welcome brush of sweet heady floral balancing out the heavier elements. I adore black musk, and while it doesn't stand out in the blend, it provides an inky, almost incensey depth behind the scenes. This is one of my unexpected favorites, and I am so thrilled to have a bottle. There is really nothing quite like it in the BPAL collection, its perfection of blending and balancing notes, with aspects of masculine and feminine that make it both mysterious and eminently wearable by any gender. Best lilac ever? Um, YES!

Such a pretty, dreamy green tea, almost jasmine tea from the sheer blossom honey that is such a delicate brush of jasmine, it only butterfly-kisses the nose. There's only the faintest suggestion of plum blossom, but it's enough to make this tea blend a little different than the other ones available from BPAL. Similarly, the lemon peel is just part of the fixings for this tea, a subtle zest, and the white musk is subtle too, anchoring the tea atmosphere rather than turning it soapy or dryer-sheety. Perfection. The throw is very small, although there was a day I wore this at work and I don't know if it was the heat from my laptop on my wrists but it lasted all day long. In any case, it is a very beautiful work scent, because it is unlikely to bother any coworkers but it will still make you happy every time you smell it. I love this one and I'm keeping my full bottle of it.